Any real and honest cumulative impacts assessment of oil and gas wells and their associated developments would conclude that the harms to humanity, other species and life itself caused by frac’ing permanently removing from the hydrogeological cycle much of the water injected (or gas fracs damaging the subsurface and the subsequent risks of contaminating groundwater) would kill all projects applied for, past present and future. No question about it. Never mind the toxicity, secrets, abusive nature and intentional criminality of the industry, and constant environmental, moral, legal (the industry corrupts everything it touches) and social harms. It’s a bad industry that needs to be removed off the earth. Send it up to Mars with Musk.
Colorado adopts new rules for oil and gas development, focusing on cumulative impacts, New rules for Colorado oil and gas development could put industry at risk Scott Weiser, Oct 15, 2024, Denver Gazette
The Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission approved a suite of new rules for oil and gas development in Colorado Tuesday.
The rules require operators to meet strict new standards regarding cumulative impacts of past, present and future oil and gas development to be permitted to develop new mineral resources, beginning Dec. 15, 2024.
New rules define cumulative impacts as the effects on public health and the environment, including the impacts to air quality, water quality, climate, noise, odor, wildlife, and biological resources caused by the incremental impacts that a proposed new or amended operation … would have when added to the impacts from other past, present, and future development, according to the commission.
“This action by the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) builds on our country’s strongest oil and gas standards. It puts into place even better protections for Colorado families and sets a new and higher standard for evaluating and addressing the cumulative impacts of oil and gas operations, especially for people living in the communities most impacted by this sector,” said Gov. Jared Polis in a news release.
Industry representatives complain that these new regulations are intended to destroy the oil and gas industry in Colorado.
Pathetic cry-baby bully invaders. Whines by oil and gas are always the same. Appropriately assessing cumulative impacts, including socio-economic, saves companies heaps of money and protects investors – but companies don’t give a shit about saving money for themselves or their investors – mainly because they get too many freebies, gifts, escape hatches, and billions in subsidies.
“These prescriptive regulations and mandates are pushed by a group of extreme environmental activists with the sole intention of banning the oil and natural gas industry in Colorado, rather than coming to the table to find solutions that will actually benefit the most vulnerable among us and bring down energy costs,”Liar. Best way to bring down energy costs is to stop polluting so much; stop lying to, harming and raping communities; ease your relentless greed, toxic masculinity and ego; stop killing earth’s livability, and quit breaking the law (there new requirements will increase law violations because companies – notably their lobby groups – refuse to stop being baffoons said Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association in a statement to The Denver Gazette.
Operators will be required to make a cumulative impacts analysis with each new permit application and submit it to the state, where it will be reviewed by state agencies including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the ECMC
“Colorado’s oil and natural gas operators have spent the past half-decade in constant rulemakings as state lawmakers have repeatedly moved the goalposts on our regulatory regime,” said Kait Schwartz, director of the American Petroleum Institute – Colorado, in a statement. “As we continue to meet and exceed that’s what all the companies and lobby groups say, but never do, not anywhere the state’s ambitious emissions reduction goals while providing Coloradans with the safe The oil and gas industry is not safe; natural gas to and in our homes, businesses, schools, hospitals etc. is a constant health harming and deadly explosive asphyxiating risk. It’s a reckless, severely polluting health harming rape & pillage industry where the only thing that rules is greed and who can lie and bully the most and reliable energy they depend on, we strongly suggest the state adopts a more substantive and efficient approach to policymaking.”
Schwartz said that the oil and gas industry has been reducing emissions, producing responsibly, and working to keep communities safe long before these new rules were introduced.Liar! Liar! The oil and gas industry, notably it’s lobby propaganda bully groups lie like the orange idiot
Cartoon by Ann Telnaes
“Despite these achievements, this rulemaking process has ignored the significant progress we’ve made and underscored a lack of genuine stakeholder engagement,” Like ONLY companies, the rich, and oil and gas lobby groups are allowed to be consulted, no one else Schwartz said.
The rules have a heavy focus on disproportionately impacted communities, including increasing buffers around them to 5,280 feet, while the new normal buffer is 2,640 from residential structures and schools.
“We appreciate the important work the Commission has undertaken in the Cumulative Impacts rulemaking and value our shared commitment for prioritizing the health, safety, and welfare of all Coloradans,” said Haley, “However, while the new rule is a notable improvement from the original draft, the Commission continues to make it increasingly difficult for smaller oil and gas companies in Colorado to operate by, once again, adding endless obstacles in the permitting process.”
ECMC Chair Jeff Robbins said the new rules are “the most protective” standards in Colorado history.
“We’ve adopted strong protections to ensure cumulative impacts from oil and gas operations are addressed as part of our protective regulatory protocol,” Robbins said in the release.
The five years API mentioned was in reference to the sweeping regulation reforms passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2019 SB 19-181. That law increased setback requirements to at least 2,000 feet from any structure. That law also changed the commission’s mission from a body that advocated for oil and gas development to one that regulates “the responsible development and production” of oil and gas in a manner that protects public health, safety and welfare, wildlife and the environment.
The time it takes permits to get approved under the new regulations can be a year or longer.
Refer also to:
From the last page of Compendium 4.0:
Conclusion
All together, findings to date from scientific, medical, and journalistic investigations combine to demonstrate that fracking poses significant threats to air, water, health, public safety, climate stability, seismic stability, community cohesion, and long-term economic vitality. Emerging data from a rapidly expanding body of evidence continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problems and harms that cannot be averted or cannot be sufficiently averted through regulatory frameworks. There is no evidence that fracking can operate without threatening public health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which public health depends.
In the words of investigative journalist Andrew Nikiforuk:
Industry swore that its cracking rock technology was safe and proven, but science now tells a different story. Brute force combined with ignorance … has authored thousands of earthquakes … [and] called forth clouds of migrating methane…. The science is complicated but clear: cracking rock with fluids is a chaotic activity and no computer model can predict where those fractures will go. The regulatory record shows that they often go out of zone; extend into water; and rattle existing oil and gas wells, and these rattled wells are leaking more methane.923
And in the words of a new commentary about fracking in the American Journal of Public
Health:
Mounting empirical evidence shows harm to the environment and to human health … and we have no idea what the long-term effects might be…. Ignoring the body of evidence, to us, is not a viable option anymore.924
2014: Study, rural Colorado: Positive association observed between greater density, proximity of natural gas wells within 10-mile radius of maternal residence and prevalence of congenital heart defects and possibly neural tube defects by Lisa M. McKenzie et al, Environmental Health Perspectives; DOI:10.1289/ehp.1306722
Conclusion
This study suggests a positive association between greater density and proximity of natural gas wells within a 10-mile radius of maternal residence and greater prevalence of [congenital heart defects] and possibly [neural tube defects], but not oral clefts, preterm birth, or reduced fetal growth. … Recent data indicate that exposure to [natural gas development] activities is increasingly common. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission estimates that 26% of the more than 47,000 oil and gas wells in Colorado are located within 150 to 1000 feet of a home or other type of building intended for human occupancy (COGCC 2012). [Emphasis added]
Our examination of the peer-reviewed medical and public health literature uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health.
2014: The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food by Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, August 5, 2014, Beacon Press Product Code: 8493 ISBN: 978-080708493-9
Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence and a fix for a flagging economy. Drilling companies assure us that the process is safe, politicians push through drilling legislation without a serious public-health debate, and those who speak out are marginalized, their silence purchased by gas companies and their warnings about the dangers of fracking stifled. The Real Cost of Fracking pulls back the curtain on how this toxic process endangers the environment and harms people, pets, and livestock. Michelle Bamberger, a veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a pharmacologist, combine their expertise to show how contamination at drilling sites translates into ill health and heartbreak for families and their animals. By giving voice to the people at ground zero of the fracking debate, the authors vividly illustrate the consequences of fracking and issue an urgent warning to all of us: fracking poses a dire threat to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and even our food supply. Bamberger and Oswald reveal the harrowing experiences of small farmers who have lost their animals, their livelihoods, and their peace of mind, and of rural families whose property values have plummeted as their towns have been invaded by drillers. At the same time, these stories give us hope, as people band together to help one another and courageously fight to reclaim their communities.
2012: Human Health Risk Assessment of Air Emissions from Development of Unconventional Natural Gas Resources by Lisa M. McKenzie et al, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado, March 19, 2012.
Results: Residents living ≤ ½ mile from wells are at greater risk for health effects from NGD than are residents living > ½ mile from wells. Subchronic exposures to air pollutants during well completion activities present the greatest potential for health effects. The subchronic non-cancer hazard index (HI) of 5 for residents ≤ ½ mile from wells was driven primarily by exposure to trimethylbenzenes, xylenes, and aliphatic hydrocarbons. Chronic HIs were 1 and 0.4. for residents ≤ ½ mile from wells and > ½ mile from wells, respectively. Cumulative cancer risks were 10 in a million and 6 in a million for residents living ≤ ½ mile and > ½ mile from wells, respectively, with benzene as the major contributor to the risk.
2012: The Fracking Job Creation Machine by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Matt Davies
Slide from Ernst presentations
A proportion (25% to 100%) of the water used in hydraulic fracturing is not recovered, and consequently this water is lost permanently to re-use, which differs from some other water uses in which water can be recovered and processed for re-use.
2011: European Union Report on frac’ing:
“high risk if the technology is not used adequately and partly have a possible high risk for environmental damages and hazards to human health even when applied properly….”
2004: Divide Creek Seep 2004 that resulted in the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission issuing a record fine against EnCana
2004: Alleged Violations of the rules and regulations of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) by EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. Cause No. 1V, Order No. 1V-276 before the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission of the State of Colorado, September 16, 2004. 29
The COGCC staff hand-delivered a Notice of Alleged Violation (“NOAV”) to EnCana on April 23, 2004. …The NOAV cited Rule 209., failure to prevent the contamination of fresh water by gas, Rule 301., failure to notify the Director when public health or safety is in jeopardy, Rule 317.i., failure to pump cement 200’ above the top of the shallowest producing horizon, Rule 324A., impacts to water quality and Rule 906.b.(3), failure to report a release to the Director.
Oil and gas companies notoriously ignore and violate rules, regulations and laws (including those not specifically related to them, such as traffic and playground/school zone laws), and are rarely, if ever, held accountable, even when they kill kids. If and when a regulator or court has the courage and integrity to do their jobs appropriately, the law violating companies scream bloody murder, have silly hissy fits and loudly and nastily threaten to sue and or they “settle” their crimes secretly away or just refuse to pay, and deny deny deflect deny and blame the harmed.